the time has come to put our beautiful library to use. although it's not exactly 'ready', be patient! it shall soon be so.
although it may seem a bit rushed, i have been pondering on different forms of library procedures. should we ask for some sort of deposit for a membership, to ensure the return of all our books, or should we make it completely free of any charge, but risk losing a few? haha! tis the question.

Many people take form our library
Fact: all the good books disappear forever while the shit ones stay and clutter the place.
Signing-out book is a good idea, though many will ignore it. Once they have done so, they will be less likely to return their acquisition.
Honesty/guilt method is the only way forward for me
Label the library, label the books.
Tell it how it is

sounds great. keep the library free but spend some money on it to make it good... here is my previous post from another section again:
its exciting that the forest is so loaded just now, and will probably be even more loaded in a months time... definitely puts us in a position a lot of similar organisations would dream of...

i think its good for people to be posting up ideas of things we could be spending money on...getting some good debate, brain juices flowing etc.

for a start, putting a load of money into the library could be good...

...thats on condition that its being taken care of by somebody, and books arent just getting stolen left right and centre. my experience is this goes in phases. at one point we stuck stickers on the cover explaining they were owned by the forest, to share, many hours of slavery had gone into buying them etc. and it reduced theft pretty dramatically

...anyway there is so much literature out there relating to the kind of things we are into, as well as books, subscriptions to various publications/ zines etc. would be great

Hi, brothers and sisters of theforest
I am a new member of the family, but can I have a suggestion?
I like the feeling of `TRUST`in theforest, so I think the library should be free and with no marks on the books. The world is now in a mass, and what theforest do is build up a world we want, isn`t it? WHY NOT trust ourselves one more time? If there is someone taking away the books, just let it happen. Someone else will educate him/her someday in someplace. And at least, it is OUR BROTHERS OR SISTERS who keeps the books.
To trust is so a romantic thing. So, let`s try again and again and again.... Don`t give up,ok?
Best wishes

marking the books does not impede on our sense of trust. It would be for informative purposes only. More a request to return books rather than any means to prevent theft.
All the same, I think it would be helpful to keep track of books lent as best we can. I believe Reka plans to keep a catalogue of our books, and noting booking borrowing would allow people to know what is available, plus whom has any particular book in question.
Something else Reka has suggested is some sort of small monthly sum to go towards the purchase of books from the various charity/second hand stores that dot the streets of Edinburgh. I guess this could be discussed in the next committee meeting. I'm sorry Gareth, but my posting is shamefully disorganised... let's just pretend I also posted on the other thread.

oooh ooh! another thing I've been meaning to discuss... on a much less open basis maybe people would be interested in some kind of goat sharing circle of sorts? Male, female or ought! Simply those of us interested could provide a list of available goats and share and be merry... something along those lines. Sure it's not entirely (or even remotely) ethical, but surely that's never stopped us in the past.

Is it daft to suggest such things on a public forum? almost certainly...